A quick object lesson in poll analysis

Red flag #1 ought to have been that this was in the Washington Times, a paper that's not exactly known for its journalistic rigor. But no, I soldiered on, reading a fairly bland writeup about a Harris poll that shows -- Surprise! -- not everybody reads political blogs. Whatever. Until this:

The Harris poll, meanwhile, found that political blog readership was lowest among those younger than 40 — and highest among people 63 and older.

Buh? Since when are seniors the biggest readers of political blogs? I mean, I know I do my best to court that demographic, but I'm fairly sure I'm in the minority there. One does not imagine Grampa gettin' up in the morning and checking out, for example, TBogg, especially not more frequently than the average young person. So -- all you amateur statisticians out there, can you think of a reason this finding might be flawed? How about we read the next sentence?

The online Harris survey of 2,302 adults was conducted Jan. 15-22.

Aha! The only people who could respond to this survey -- in polling terminology, its "sample frame" -- were people who were already using the Internet. Now, we can assume that it's a fairly small and non-representative portion of seniors who are online regularly, whereas a larger and more diverse (though still non-representative) portion of younger people use the Internet. (See Gallup, among many other sources.) So you cannot generalize from these findings out to the population at large, only to Internet users, and hence saying that blog readership is "higher" among one group or another is simply wrong. In fact, it's likely that in raw numbers, more young and middle-aged people read political blogs than older people, simply because there's more of them online. This is very very simple stuff, and it's sad that no editor at the Washington Times (assuming they have editors) caught it.

(This is also why Internet polls -- like the Harris and Zogby Interactive -- are completely worthless for political purposes. The Internet just cannot provide a representative sample. Or at least not yet; if current trends continue, Internet use may be as standard as phone use within a decade or so, at which point it'll be kosher for polling.)

...Still, maybe I'm wrong, and the chief demographic of a political blog really is the over-65 set. In which case, what the hell, give 'em what they want has always been my motto...

----SHAMELESS CROSS-PROMOTION ALERT: Grab the Indy today (or, if you're over 65, read it online) for a bunch of insightful pieces on the 5th anniversary of Iraq, including a brilliant analysis of media's role in war and public discourse by our own Sam Jack.

Communiqué from Planet Zoot

Beep-zip! This is cjm13, beaming down from Planet Zoot! Just wanted to let you know that, up here, Iraq's political leaders are the only people in Iraq! And the ordinary people in Iraq are made out of rock candy!

Broop! cjm13 out!